Monday, 9 November 2020
Ruthless
Ruthlessness is a rum notion isn’t it. The idea overlaps with stubborn, pig-headed, narcissistic, egomaniac, fanatical and self-interested. That is not to claim that these characteristics are roughly the same, merely that they overlap in the murky arena of consequences.
What they have in common is the situations they lead to. Obviously enough, these are situations where other people and their ideas count for almost nothing, often nothing at all. Of course the easy one, the one requiring least mental effort is where the ideas of other people count for nothing. Zilch.
A egomaniac collects some followers and dependents - we have the seed of ruthlessness. Individuals do not have to be ruthless in order to become part of a ruthless environment or movement. Ruthlessness is much more common than we pretend. Easily seeded and easily grown.
Most people do not appear to know that they are a contributory part of a ruthless environment or movement. We know that already. Too often we see ordinary decent people nod their approval of political movements which are quite clearly ruthless, even though most supporters are not necessarily ruthless at all. Idle, timid or priggish self-interest will do it.
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3 comments:
I think we need a concept of "Institutional Ruthlessness". Organisations that simply don't care about people, and end up treating them as dirt, without anyone in that organisation being much of a Nazi. Just doing what they are told, performing a role, keeping their heads down, paying the mortgage, getting on in their career...
Holding back a vaccine announcement / release until the right man wins?
Nah. Pure coincidence.
Sam - good idea, we do need a concept of "Institutional Ruthlessness". The public sector can be worse than the private in this respect.
Doonhamer - lots of coincidences at the moment, although I won't be in the queue to try a rushed new vaccine.
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